Verizon And Google Announce Partnership

Verizon and Google issued a press release announcing their partnership on mobile and wireless products and services – namely Android – and held a webcast to discuss their plans moving forward. Some very interesting developments came from discussion as Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Head Android Andy Rubin explained what [...]

I find it interesting that once again Verizon makes this announcement days before Sprint is set to release the Hero. Didn't they do the same thing just before the Pre was released? Yes, I believe they did.

Seems like Verizon is running a bit afraid of Sprint. There are a number of Verizon customers talking about jumping ship to Sprint not only for the Hero but the plan price points and the free any time any mobile.

How long before Verizon gets rid of their stupid calling circle and follows suit?

Apparently andriod is not as open a platform as one would think! Good words, making agreements with specific vendors is one thing. Agreements with a specific carrier, especially with BS about the partnership "will leverage the Verizon and the best of the andriod platform.." is concerning. Perhaps someone did not do the research on which carrier actually does have the most flexibility and room for growth, but only the number of subscribers that apparently Google is trying to attract, to build accounts.

So, open for the "best" of andriod platform is apparently for Verizon, closed to other carriers. Looks like to me that Google is leveraging the open community to make partnerships with specific carriers/vendors for profit.

After all... the wireless user is tired of :

iPhone only on AT&T (oh, I don't want a iPhone, tired of the adversarial spirit of Apple)
Palm Pre only available on Sprint
..and so on.

So, andriod is apparently repeating the model that the profiteers use.

Of course, I have not read the agreement, but it is of concern to this consumer that a so-called open platform is making an agreement with a specific wireless carrier.